


Parking in places with girls

by kurushi



Category: The Matrix (Movies)
Genre: Awkwardness, F/M, Not In Love, between films
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:53:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5415926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurushi/pseuds/kurushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is tedious repairs on the Nebuchadnezzar and sitting in parked cars watching targets in the Matrix. Neo has always been awkward and introverted, and he's always sucked at relationships. Not that he's in one, because he'd have to say something other than "hi," "yeah," and "huh?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parking in places with girls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [holyfant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this story. I don't think I'd ever have seen this fandom as cute or awkward without your prompts, and I had a lot of fun trying to write dorky Neo.
> 
> Lots of thanks to my beta, m.

Neo never asked why Morpheus chose to leave the positions on the Nebuchadnezzar vacant. At first it had seemed obvious; mourning for the lost. Later, it seemed strange given the amount of work they were doing. More redpills were being rescued from the Matrix, than ever before. The Nebuchadnezzar rarely stopped in Zion overnight, and they stayed out at broadcast level for weeks on end.

Trinity knew most of the jobs, knew the ship as well as Morpheus did. Neo would sit and spend an hour trying to translate the knowledge he'd been given in the training modules to the circuitry at his fingertips. While he found and replaced one burned-out wire, Trinity would dart past with an arc welder, then a wrench, then a battery pack.

"Neo," she said, every time she passed him.

"Uh..." Neo said, eyes caught by the soft halo of frizz in her hair, or the way that her right shoulder fell out through a rather large hole in her sweater. She would smooth her hair back, shrug her sweater back into place, hitch her power tool higher on her hip, and keep moving. He should tell her about how beautiful she was, how glad he was to be alive, how much he owed her just because she believed in him.

"... hi, Trinity."

But she was already gone by the time that Neo had come up with that conversational gem.

Link swivelled in his chair, cackling. "Oh, nice moves!"

"Yeah, whatever." He was not in the mood for Link's well-meaning pointers. He got some, just the same.

"I said it before, and I mean it. Girls just want a warm bed. You don't have to say much, you know she already likes you. Just give her some honey."

Neo ducked his head, wincing as his hair, growing longer, fell forwards into his eyes. "Yeah. I am not going there today, Link."

Link frowned, said "Suit yourself." He turned back to his screens, obviously upset.

Neo gave up. If he'd ever thought that finding out the truth about the Matrix, seeing things clearly, would make life less awkward and confusing, he knew better now. Inside and out, people were people. Neo had always had troubles with that. It was insanity to repeat the same thing and expect a different result, right?

He was good at debugging programs. He was decidedly not that great at small talk. There was more to it than that, too, but he couldn't quite focus on it. Something about it that made him wince away.

When he was a kid, growing up with his Atari, he'd read wide-eyed about Trinity's exploits in the newspapers. He'd wanted to grow up to be Trinity. All along, she'd been a girl close to his own age. All along, she'd been waiting for him, as long as he turned out to be the One.

No pressure.

Yeah, right. Trusting Morpheus, that was one thing. But this? If he ever – ever – let her down, that was it. Given what he had to work with, it was only a matter of time until he did.

She knocked on the door to his cabin. He hadn't sealed the portal, so he nodded and she came in. Sat down on the bed beside him, put her hand parallel to his own. Not touching. Waiting for permission to touch.

"I know it's a big adjustment, being here. It's so very different."

"You are kidding, right? You know where I worked. How I lived. This place is quieter. It's better." He couldn't stop his hands fidgeting in his lap. He still didn't know where to put himself in this place.

She smiled sadly at him. "I know. It was the same for me. But the biggest thing that I struggled with, coming out, was the rules. I learned to code as a little girl, because I could. Because I could make the rules any way I wanted in my programs. I became a hacker because I could violate the rules that other people made."

He didn't have anything to say. She wasn't looking at him anymore, she was still telling her story. In the silence, he waited.

She took a deep breath. "And when I learned about the Matrix, that first day, I realised that I was free from machine rule. On the second day I learned that Morpheus was in the military, and that Zion has culture, social rules, establishments that I couldn't avoid. Unbreakable rules."

"So?" He was beginning to get it, what she was saying. He wanted to hear her say it anyway.

"Living in the Matrix is like living in a video game. You can exploit the rules, push boundaries. In Zion, resources are scarce. People here value hand-made goods; offline, natural born humans. I knew I had more freedom being ignorant in the Matrix than I ever did after I was liberated. I knew I had to learn to live with other people to survive. I didn't want to go back in, not ever, but I still don't know how to belong here."

Neo swallowed, tightly. He'd been expecting, he didn't know what. An ultimatum. Love me or else.  You're the One. Instead, Trinity understood him. She was like him. She'd gone through exactly the same things he had.

"It's like everyone I meet expects me to be happy, grateful, all the time, just because I've been freed. I don't mind it here. But it's a lot to take in."

She put her hand over his own, stilling his fingers. He braced himself to fight the instinct to pull away, but it never came. But he _always_ shied away from others. Something was different about her.

"Huh," he said, looking down at their joined hands.

"What?" she smiled gently, like it was safe, it was okay to say anything to her. She had bags under her eyes and she smelled of sweat because water was precious at broadcast level, and showers weren't the best use for it. Her boots touched the floor, just like his did, because she was tall and strong and impossibly real.

"Nothing," he said, already wishing he'd kept his damn mouth shut.

She smiled sadly. She shook her head, like she'd been about to say something herself, then patted his hand and heaved herself up off the bed. "I'd better keep moving so we can get patched up enough to limp back to Zion."

"Seeya," he said. She waved and pulled the portal shut behind herself.

He frowned and made a face. “Seeya? Seeya?! Ugh.”

* * *

As more and more people came looking for answers in the Matrix, the Nebuchadnezzar spent more and more time broadcasting. Neo and Trinity spent more time sitting in cars and empty warehouses, watching and listening and waiting.

"There's rules for this, too." Neo observed. “It's like Zion's followed us in here.”

Trinity gave him a strange look, then remembered that conversation. "Yes," she said. "If we draw any attention, we're risking people's lives. There's lots of sitting and waiting."

"In cars," he said.

"In cars," she agreed. "In here it's the 90s. There's no hoverboards or jetpacks in the consumer market yet."

"Were there ever?"

She grinned at him. "When we get back, I'll take you into the educational construct of the time before the wars. What we have left. It's a pastiche, really, but it's fun. You'll like it."

A car drove past, tires crackling on the wet asphalt.

"It rained earlier, before we came here." Oh wow, ten points for stating the obvious, Neo.

"Yes."

The real problem was this. Neo had only found two women attractive, ever. The first had been Jessica Rabbit, who was unreal and married and unreachable in so many ways that it was safe. The second had been Trinity, and she was solid and her body was lean and strong with muscle. Her hair was short. Her leather top was tight like armour. She was calm and in control, and it always made him feel like a bumbling idiot, so out of place.

Case in point, her residual self-image had given her leather body armour. He was wearing a plain black tee, a pair of his plain black cargo pants (not faded in the wash, at least), and a black woolen coat that was slowly getting closer to his Dream Coat, something lighter and freer flowing with a high collar. He liked high collars, mostly because his neck betrayed a lot of his feelings, and he knew he'd look more collected with his throat covered up. Nerves. He swallowed.

"So," Trinity said. She'd obviously been waiting for him to say something else. Here he was, making small-talk about imaginary weather and leaving long awkward silences, and feeling insecure about his subconscious clothing choices. He had to say something, damnit!

"So."

What was really scary about Trinity wasn't how attracted to her he was. Not really. That was unusual, but not strange. Not wrong. It was kind of nice. There was more to it than that.

She shifted, and her clothing creaked, creased, as she turned towards him. "Neo. I keep wanting to talk to you about something. It's never the right time. There's always someone else there, but-"

She cut herself off.

There she went. He wanted to rip this off like a band-aid. Hurt one of the only friends he'd ever had. One of the only people that he trusted. He'd only known her a month. You can't love someone in just a month, you can't even start to know them.

"I know. I'm sorry. I've been avoiding it, too."

She closed her eyes, and nodded stiffly. Turned back to face the road before she opened them again. "I think I already knew that. But thanks for saying."

She smiled, a little, but it didn't last.

"What you said. When you thought I was dying."

She shook her head. "Doesn't matter. Sorry. I mean, of course it matters. But the thing is, Neo-"

He had to say something, just because it hurt too much to keep going at this pace. But one look at her face and he was frozen.

"There's a lot of ways you can love somebody. Neo, I'm..." she swallowed, pressed a hand over her own lips, took a moment. "Neo. I watched you, just like we watch all these people. I knew enough about you to care for you before we met. I felt a strong kinship with you, even though I knew that there was a chance you wouldn't make it out."

"Trinity, I-"

She held up a hand, her gloved fingers shining in the yellow streetlight on the corner.

"There's more than one way to love someone. Neo, I love you. I'd do anything to keep you alive. But I don't think I'm _in_ love with you. I..."

"Trinity." Was he relieved? Was he disappointed? His body felt numb. He shifted towards her, and the seatbelt got in his way. He had to wrangle his elbows and his fingers, fumbling with the release button.

She laughed under her breath, despite the serious expression on her face. "I- I know that after what I said, that kiss, you might be expecting. Well. More from me than I can give you. I do find you attra-"

He put a hand over hers, lowered it so that there was nothing between them and he could see her clearly.

"You've been avoiding me," he said out loud as he realised it. "All the work you've been doing."

She winced and nodded. "Yes."

"Trinity. I have to tell you."

She turned her head to look at him, straight in the eyes.

"I don't think I'm in love with you either."

Her eyes widened, and her nostrils flared. "Oh."

"Oh," he agreed. “But I also find you...”

As one, almost, they moved. Lips and tongue, and he was blown away by how real it felt when it was all just synapses and everything was being streamed in and out of them through broadcast-quality cables. His body overrode everything he knew to be true and he couldn't have dodged a bullet if he'd wanted to. Trinity was warm, soft, firm, and he could smell the breaths she exhaled. He could feel her heartbeat. She was all that existed. Knowing it wasn't quite real made him dizzy. Kind of made it hotter.

Her hands were strong and insistent. She held the back of his neck firmly. Her warm leather gloves felt nothing like the headrest on the Nebuchadnezzar.It was so strange to feel sensations right there, in that place he'd grown accustomed to the vacant numbness of his main spinal communications port. The hairs on his neck prickled. His spine twisted awkwardly as he leaned over the gearstick and past the tracking gear braced in between the front seats.

Her lips were smooth - not chapped like in the real world. Her skin smelled of leather and rain - not sweat and grease. She tasted clean, and there was an unexpected thrill that came from kissing, from touching someone who was alive and the same, but also so outside and other.

Her hair felt hard and crunchy-slick with gel under his fingers.

He wondered what it would be like, to kiss her properly in reality. To find the moles and flaws that she forgot in the Matrix. What it would be like, to feel their ports and plugs touch by accident. How strange it would be. What the different rules of sex might be in reality. Whoah.

But, fuck, Link and possibly Morpheus could be watching this. But there weren't as many rules in the Matrix and they wouldn't need contraception, and if he could work past this immediate feeling of flesh, if he figured it out just right they could twist the passage of time, and Trinity was _good_ with her tongue and she was born to break rules and she was so so smart and so powerful so gentle and it was so hot and nothing else mattered and-

They had a job to do. “We should,” she said, pulling back to catch her breath.

Neo ran his hands through his hair, closed his eyes. Tried to stay still as his heartbeat raced in his chest. “Yeah. We should keep an eye on the kid.”

It was kind of weird. On a mission. Sitting so close to Trinity that their elbows bumped. Sex was happening. Could happen. Would happen. Didn't have to mean forever. They could take this one day at a time. But they had to pretend that they were sitting in silence next to each other, all dressed up in their finest self-images, _not thinking_ about it at all. Awkward. He had to say something before the awkward silence became a long, awful silence. Or before he began fidgeting with the radio scanner and annoying her.

"That, ah. Was nice." Ugh, seriously? That was the best he could come up with?!

She smiled and okay. Not the wrong thing to say. Good. "Neo. I'm glad that you're my friend. That... that you're not like the other men I've met."

Any sexy ideas evaporated with the thought of what Trinity might have experienced as a woman and a hacker. What she did experience with Cypher.

"I..." There was no good thing to say in response. Thanks? Sorry? "Me too. I'm glad that you're my friend."

She bumped his elbow with her own and settled down into her seat for a long night of observation. She didn't seem as perfect or collected as before. Her back relaxed into the chair.

Neo kept an eye on the readouts, monochrome on the clunky old CRT monitor. "You used to watch me like this?"

Trinity smiled. "I did. I wasn't very professional about it."

When they packed up for the day it was the first time that the feeling of disconnecting - the jack pulling out, the sick stomach-twisting vertigo as his body adjusted to the change in pressure and volume - felt like coming home. Neo sat up, disoriented and bleary, and Trinity turned her head to look at him, her eyes bloodshot and her skin grey from the poor lighting.

She grinned at him and he grinned back. Their ship would fall apart and people would die. There would never be any nice tasting food again. To be honest, Zion's rules sucked. They were never going to find the privacy to actually hook up. They would never find time to rest. But they'd be exhausted, ragged and socially awkward together and it was the best thing that had ever happened in Neo's entire life.


End file.
